THREAD
Hilda Tweedy (born Monaghan 1911) grew up in Athlone. She spent some of her early years in Egypt, where her father was working. In 1936, following her marriage, she returned to Ireland, where she hoped to work as a secondary school teacher.
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Her application was turned down (despite holding a #maths degree from the University of London) because she was #married, the school felt that it would not be "nice" to have a pregnant teacher if she started a family.
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During World War 2, there were significant food shortages in #Ireland, & the working-classes experienced a rise in malnutrition (which had already been a problem before the war because of Ireland's persistent issues with endemic poverty & recent famine). 3/11 #IrishWomenInHistory

With other women activists, Hilda drew up a "housewives' petition" in 1941, urging the government to take action to ensure that food & fuel were distributed fairly, to provide food to pregnant women & to the children of the unemployed.
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In 1942, Hilda & her fellow activists founded the Irish Housewives' Committee (IHC) & pursued a range of goals aimed at making Ireland less unequal. Some religious groups immediately opposed them, claiming that they were trying to disrupt the "sanctity" of family life. 5/11

In 1946, The Irish Housewives' Association was founded by Hilda & associates on the back of the work that had been done before, it drew up a constitution stating that housewives had the right to an active role in society...
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.... that equality of opportunity should be available to everyone, and that consumers had rights with respect to essential goods. The organisation gradually grew, largely by word of mouth. In 1949, it was accused of having "communist sympathies".
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From the 1960s, the Irish Housewives' Association fought against the marriage bar (in Ireland at that time, married women were excluded from all permanent public sector except teaching and many private sector jobs).
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They also sought for women to have the right to work in the police force & to serve on juries (women had technically been allowed to do so since 1921, but were routinely excluded, with sadly predictable consequences for domestic assault cases, & so on).
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In '72, she became a founder member & first Chair of the Council for the Status of Women. She was the Irish delegate to the United Nations World Conference on Women in 1975. In 1992 she published A Link in the Chain: The Story of the Irish Housewives' Association '42–'92.
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In 2003 she donated her papers to the National Archives of #Ireland, where they remain to this day. She died in 2005. It is impossible to calculate her vast contribution to the cause of #feminism and #equality in #Ireland.
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